Necrotic Nocturnal Nuisances: Hecate And The Hostile Cognizant Teeth
by Quillon42
Summary: Takes the old Turbografx 16 game Night Creatures and imagines a far quicker workaround for the hero than his harrowing the underground environs of the goddess who cursed him hours earlier.


NECROTIC NOCTURNAL NUISANCES: HECATE AND THE HOSTILE COGNIZANT TEETH

By Quillon42

Though the young man had inhabited a dismal locality rife with gloom and grostesqueries, despite the fact that he owned an address at a location that was basically the slum of Samhain…

…It came as an utter shock to him when the dapper dallier found himself nommed upon most nefariously by the most infernally infectious flying rodent in the realm.

And then immediately thereafter he was informed by Steven Wright, who apparently became a vampire after the Eighties (though maybe he had been one all along anyway) that the protagonist quite pedestrian would devolve from human to haunt for all time, lest he ferret out the femme of the night, Hecate herself.

Yea, this impetuous if imbecilic preppy had been plopped down in this village of viciousness for near a score of years, and yet none of the Volkswagen-sized verminous rats, none of the Tyrannosaurus-skulled skulking humanoids of the everyday evil evenings…none of this had tipped him off, after then spending nearly a generation in this blighted burg, that he could possibly become infused unfavorably with the juiciest of jujus.

Really, for whatever reason he wasn't thinking much of it, was the proper-noun-less protagonist, when he was crossing a most haunted of heaths at the crack of dusk. Once he sustained a bite from the bitchiest of bats, however, it must have been brought back to the front of his muddled mind as to the perilous perpetrations that could befall him for cruising outside his cottage after curfew.

Most nonplussed was the blonde belle to whom he was betrothed, she telling him sans hesitation that nooky was off the negotiations table for that evening given his corruption-contaminated state. As such, the hero would have to reconnoiter with another lady, many times that night in fact, in order to regain his full former self. And certainly as well it was not the face or the figure whom he'd hoped to encounter so intimately that foul night.

Rather it was in fact a kerchiefed mischief-madam who had accosted this hapless hustler of the night, a woman who maintained a reputation throughout this apocalyptic township to know her way around the arcane. It would be she who would classify the creatures in fact that the fellow would flow into that night, all at the price of his ebbing vitality.

Amidst the wary wolf and the obstreperous owl and the burly badger in fact, this courageous chap became the unwitting warden of a petting zoo of perdition. Now it would fall upon the same crusader to literally embody said menacing menagerie all the way to the hollowed-out home of hateful Hecate and bring this human thence back his soul.

This would all arrive in short time due to this Clean-Shaven-Mel-Gibson-looking goober gallivanting through the town after dark, as well as through the wood and the graves and the subterranean schematic that was Hecate's home in fact. Impetuously would he plow through searching spiders and zealous zombies, as well as hooded horrors who had bionic scythe limbs that were actually pretty enviable, as well as werewolves who would noncommittally fuck off and return to human form after absorbing only so much abuse from meager melee attacks of the player's avatar.

Apparently the municipality was rather pacifistic, as the best that the armory would have had to offer historically was interred within the crypts at the city limits. Thus not unlike a chary counselor in the Nintastic _Friday the 13__th_ by LJN, this medievally-maddened Maximilian would have to scour the dank caverns in order to obtain some items that were worth a damn during this quick crisis, such as a musket with minimal ammunition or a sword that he could swing like a goddamned windshield wiper. This he did most duly, he foraging in these foul synthetic furrows for the weaponry he would require to rout out the inhabitants of these cocoons of cruelty. One such execrable extermination involved his blasting to and beyond literal pieces a lady whose dismembered parts assaulted him separately, including intestines and lungs and heart each apiece here, before he could proceed. Such awfulness almost put old school Splatterhouse to shame, considering the similarly fragmented Madball boss at the chapel in the middle of that respective opus of offal.

Regardless of the retch induced by some of the somber souls with whom the badger-transforming, _Beaver (2011)_-actor-resembling battler engaged, a few of the frightful freaks actually went down rather easy with the right implements. Holy Water proved effective against a possessed arbor which was perhaps an ancestor to the tree from _Poltergeist_; it also worked well against a warlock hovering around atop a cauldron in the vaults. A Lantern thrown managed predictably to immolate a Mummy down there as well, and it additionally put the lights out of a Jack O Lantern man milling around against the mofo seeking to nab back his humanity.

It was instants following the pixelated purification of the pumpkin-pated second subboss, in fact, that out proceeded anew the do-rag-ged homely homelady to declare the new animalistic ability that the bat-bitten boy had now acquired.

"The owl gives the power of flight," she said, adjusting her azure apron and wiping her hands down on a bit to rid the grease she must have accumulated while apparently having washed dishes next to Vic Tayback, given her appearance.

Nodding readily, the nocturnal novitiate spread his arms and transmogrified into the white winged bird in the shake of a tenebrous tail feather. Then he very slowly spun his head a full three hundred sixty after, once he had this great epiphany strike upon him given the knowledge critical to his jaunty journey that he now eagerly kenned ever so readily through this latest familiar.

With no hesitation the bright bird hovered, then the avian dove down to nibble the noodge lady on the neck as was done to him only hours before.

"Heywha?!" huffed the hermitess to the Human/Hedwig, she seemingly failing to comprehend the man's motive for assailing her…even though the fangs in the serpentine follicles underneath the headdress of his hoary homeslice had already so commenced to arouse.

"Do you really think you're fooling me, or any of us bumpkins for that matter now, with that disguise…" screeched the ivory flier as he beat his wings. "It doesn't take the wisdom of an owl at all, to understand that one who may preach about shapeshifting…might also practice it herself as well."

At this the harridan who was in fact Hecate made her true form abruptly known. "You ingrate," the indignant demoness now hissed in time with the serpents writhing upon her scalp, "I do not passsss sssuch giftsssss along ssssso lightly, you ssssshould knowwwwww…

…

…

"Owwwwwwwwww…

…

…

…

"_Owwwwwwwwww?!"_

…

By the time the ancient alumna of the occult had understood what had happened to her, she had already shed a fair share of scales from her frame.

"Wh…what deviousness have you don…"

"Only aught as underhanded an act as you have so perpetrated upon me, dear lady of the dark," said the billowing bird, which was now turning back into the lad who looked the lead from _Bird On A Wire (1990)_. Then mellifluously from the maw of this assiduous, ancestral Mel: "Just as you bestowed the Mark of the Bat upon my person a number of hours back, the wisdom visited upon me through my owl form imbued me with the insight as to your true identity behind the apron and kerchief just now. As such, I have gifted you in turn with the Wheal of the Owl. Enjoy your newfound humanity and finite mortality, you loon-larynxed lamia!"

And then Hecate, she waving her arms frenetically in a vain attempt to reverse the same kind of mystic misery she inflicted upon this same man some whiles past…her would-be victim swinging his sword in the air mockingly in time with her varied screams, as if conducting the shrillest symphony (which is what the hero looked like he was doing while slashing with said sabre in-game anyway).

Indeed a tune did in fact materialize in the ether upon this terrific trouncing turn of events.

(CLUNG CLUNG CLUNG CLUNG CLUNG)

Specifically the eerie yet endearing background themes of the game piped up anew, but even more tenderly than the Sega-Master-Systemesque rendition of the tunes that reverberated through the six or seven minutes of adventure that occurred before in this television-commercial-duration excursion. All the cutesy notes celebrated the fact that the hero would not need to use crossbow against any Argus-Eyed Mini-Dinosaur in the crypts of Hecate, nor would he need to employ any archaic arquebus against some Eighties Punk Rocker masquerading as a Fury either down there. He could just get back to his girl and live out the remainder of his muted-texture mundane existence as a human in his humble humdrum hovel.


End file.
